UPDATE: Another civilian has been confirmed dead after the terror attacks in London.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick announced on Sunday morning local time that the death toll had risen to seven after the “appalling and tragic” incident.
That means 10 people, including three terrorists, are dead after the attacks on London Bridge and Borough Markets.
Met Police say the three terrorists were shot dead in the Borough Market.
Police rushed to the chaotic scene on Saturday night where shots were heard and authorities urged Londoners on Twitter to “run, hide, tell” if they were caught in the attack. The BBC cited police as saying there had been more than one fatality.
The attacks come days ahead of a June 8 election and less than two weeks after a suicide bomber killed 22 people at a pop concert by US singer Ariana Grande in Manchester. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The BBC showed a photograph of two possible London attackers shot by police, one of whom had canisters strapped to his body. Hours after the attack the area remained sealed off.
The London ambulance service said at least 20 people had been taken to six hospitals across the city. Three major London hospitals said that they were on lockdown to keep patients and staff safe.
A Reuters reporter said some time after the attack began that he had heard loud bangs near the Borough Market area.
Streets around London Bridge and Borough Market, fashionable districts packed with bars and restaurants, were been busy with people on a Saturday night out. BBC showed dozens of people, evidently caught up in the attack, being escorted through a police cordon with their hands on their heads.
Witnesses described a white van careering into pedestrians near London Bridge and knocking over several people.
“It looked like he was aiming for groups of people. I froze because I didn’t know what to do,” Mark Roberts, 53, a management consultant, told Reuters. He saw at least six people on the ground after the van veered on and off the pavement.
“It was horrendous,” he said.
A taxi driver told the BBC that three men got out of the van with long knives and “went randomly along Borough High Street stabbing people”.
Witnesses said people ran into a bar to seek shelter.
“People started running and screaming, and the van crashes into the railing behind. We went towards Borough Market and everyone went inside (the bar). Everyone in the bar started pushing people from the exits,” one witness who gave his name as Brian, 32, told Reuters.
Islamic State earlier on Saturday sent out a call on instant messaging service Telegram urging its followers to launch attacks with trucks, knives and guns against “Crusaders” during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Similar attacks, in Berlin, Nice, Brussels and Paris, have been carried out by militants over the past couple of years.
“Following updates from police and security officials, I can confirm that the terrible incident in London is being treated as a potential act of terrorism,” Prime Minister Theresa May said.
One woman told Reuters she saw what appeared to be three people with knife wounds and possibly their throats cut at London Bridge at the Thames river. Reuters was unable to immediately verify her account.
A witness told CNN two men had entered a restaurant in the Borough Market area and stabbed two people inside. He said a waitress was stabbed in the throat and a man was stabbed in the back.
The Manchester bombing on May 22 was the deadliest attack in Britain since July 2005, when four British Muslim suicide bombers killed 52 people in coordinated attacks on London’s transport network.